Cyberterrorism

This week three Alabama hospitals were forced to turn away “all but the most-critical new patients” after a ransomware attack infected their computers as the FBI warned that these attacks are growing more sophisticated and costly.

A May 15 Paris conference, co-sponsored by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron, will bring together national leaders and tech companies to focus on terrorists’ use of social media. One critic warned of overreaction to tragedies like the recent New Zealand mosque attacks, which were livestreamed by the shooter.

Leon Panetta called the infrastructure changes enacted by the current administration to protect America’s electricity insufficient. Writing with former Senator James Talent in The Hill, he said partnership with the public sector was now critical to shoring up U.S. defenses against a “cyber Pearl Harbor.”

In a joint bipartisan resolution, 22 Western governors called on the feds to make cybersecurity a top national priority, beginning with restoring the position of the White House cybersecurity coordinator—eliminated in May.

Federal workers back at their computers after the longest shutdown in U.S. history are likely to be overwhelmed by the backlog of cybertraffic—making them vulnerable to hostile overseas hackers, says a cybersecurity expert. And next time could be worse.

Americans are asking if there are better ways of running our justice system, but without the numbers to answer fundamental questions, reformers are operating in the dark, write two specialists in criminological research.

A lawsuit charges that the Trump administration violated protesters' First Amendment rights in Washington, D.C. The president approvingly tweets a letter from his former lawyer calling the demonstrators "terrorists."

The partial shutdown of immigration courts during the COVID-19 health crisis has derailed final hearings for tens of thousands of individuals, and is likely to postpone the decisions about the fate of many more for months, if not years, while they wait in detention, according to data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.